#  Walter Johnson 

Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African and African American Studies

 

 

 



   ![walt_headshot.jpg](/sites/g/files/omnuum10471/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/hmui/files/walt_headshot.jpg?itok=RxEzVjrs) 

 



 





 

Bio: Walter Johnson grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and is a member of the Rock Bridge High School Hall of Fame (2006). His prize-winning books, *Soul by Soul: Life Inside in the Antebellum Slave Market* (1999) and *River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Mississippi Valley's Cotton Kingdom* (2013), were published by Harvard University Press. His autobiographical essay, “Guns in the Family,” was included the 2019 edition of Best American Essays; it was originally published in the *Boston Review*, of which Johnson is a contributing editor. *The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States* will be published in the spring of 2020. Johnson is a founding member of the Commonwealth Project, which brings together academics, artists, and activists in an effort to imagine, foster, and support revolutionary social change, beginning in St. Louis.

 

 

 





 

 

- ## People
    
     [Associated Faculty Committee](/people/steering-committee-faculty)